1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printing system, a printing method, a printing control apparatus, a printing control method, and a computer readable recording medium stored with a printing control program. The present invention particularly relates to a printing system, a printing method, a printing control apparatus, a printing control method, and a computer readable recording medium stored with a printing control program for executing a process of imposing image data by means of dedicated hardware.
2. Description of Related Art
Image data for each page of printed matters such as books is imposed, for example, in such a manner that images for two pages are printed on one side of a sheet of paper so that they are presented in a proper page order when the sheet of paper is folded.
As to the technology related to the imposition process, printing control apparatus such as the one disclosed by Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2007-304788 are known. The printing control apparatus disclosed by Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2007-304788 receives print data transmitted from a client PC to generate image data per page and executes the imposition process. The imposition process can be executed by means of a dedicated hardware circuit.
However, since data is processed in increments of data of a specific block size (e.g., 8×8 dots) in a hardware circuit, the data size of the image data imposed by the hardware circuit is limited. If the data size of the image data of the document portion of each page generated based on the print data is not an integral multiple of said block size, supplementary data (hereinafter referred to as “padding data”) is added to the image data in order to make the data size of the image date to be imposed an integral multiple of said block size.
Therefore, the imposition process of image data according to the hardware circuit has a problem that the padding data can be positioned in the data area of the image data corresponding to the boundary area of the images for two pages to be printed on a sheet of paper, when the data size of the image data of the document portion is not an integral multiple of said block size. The padding data that exists in the data area that corresponds to the boundary area of the image causes the blank space between the images for two pages to be printed on a sheet of paper to be larger than its preset value. In particular, if the blank space between the two images to be printed on a sheet of paper is set as “No blank space” in the printing setting, the padding data that exists in the data area corresponding to the boundary area of the image causes a linear blank space on the seam between the images. This blank space formed on the seam between the images may make the printed matter look poorer in quality in case the two images make one image that extends over two pages.
If the imposition process is executed by means of software, such problems do not occur as it becomes possible to handle data in increments of one dot. However, a problem of executing the imposition process by software is that its processing speed is slower than in the case of executing the imposition process by means of a hardware circuit.